The Holiday Murders (23 page)

The conversation turned to inconsequential matters, and Tom resumed his uncomplicated, easy manner, which gave some respite from the heavy, threatening presence of Ptolemy and Fred. Fred said nothing, and Ptolemy made some effort to offset the brutish air that hung about him by uttering an occasional urbanity. Tom took every opportunity to allow the group small glimpses of the ugly persona he’d begun to inhabit. Each sour little remark about communists, or snide aside about Jews, elicited nods of approval and agreement.

As the morning wore on, the group’s previous discretion about politics fell away completely until the conversation centred on Australia First and its untimely demise.

‘We were on the verge of forming a successful party,’ Magill said. ‘We were for king and country. We
are
for king and country.’

‘It’s a shame that the wrong king’s on the throne,’ Ptolemy said. ‘His brother was sympathetic.’

‘So what happened to Australia First?’ Tom asked.

‘There were elements who were indiscreet in their partisan-ship,’ Margaret said. ‘They should have kept their powder dry, and read the general mood more accurately. Zealots are useful when things are up and running; otherwise they tend rather to frighten the horses.’

‘Great patriots are always seen as traitors by toadying governments,’ Ptolemy said. Fred grunted his assent to this claim. Joe said, ‘Well spoken,’ and Ptolemy shifted his pale gaze in his direction. There was no sign of gratitude for Joe’s show of support in those disconcerting eyes; Joe thought that Ptolemy’s emotional range probably didn’t accommodate such feelings.

‘A short walk would be good,’ Arthur said, and hauled his portly body to its feet. With only a few hours left before he and Tom needed to leave to catch the train back to Melbourne, Joe decided the time was right to speak to the two women, who looked like they intended to stay put. Tom, who’d made such a success of proving his credentials, could get information out of the men. Joe made an excuse about not wanting to get sunburnt — an excuse that produced a derisive little snort from Fred — and sat back down again. The rest of the men headed for the door, with an admonition from Margaret to watch out for snakes and holes in the ground.

‘This place is riddled with old gold diggings,’ she said.

The women were glad to have Joe for company as they set about preparing for lunch. Margaret let slip that she found Ptolemy and Fred a bit creepy.

‘His name is Jones,’ she said. ‘Can you believe that? Ptolemy Jones. I don’t know Fred’s last name — maybe it’s equally exotic, but in reverse.’

‘You don’t sound like you know them very well,’ Joe said.

‘None of us do. We met Fred for the first time yesterday, and Mr Jones arrived for lunch on Christmas Day. That was the first time we met him.’

‘I don’t like him at all,’ Peggy said. ‘Jones, I mean. He’s scary, if you ask me. Not my sort at all.’

‘Is he the reason that everyone else left?’ Joe asked.

Peggy and Margaret exchanged glances, and decided that there was no reason to be coy.

‘Yes,’ Margaret said. ‘I think they found his political commit-ment a little, well, overwhelming.’

‘They come for tits and arse,’ Peggy said. ‘Let’s face it. They weren’t expecting to be bullied about National Socialism.’

‘And you don’t mind?’ Joe tried to sound nonchalant.

‘God knows I’m used to Mitchell going on about his vision for Australia, but this Jones creature makes Mitchell sound like a decadent liberal. Mitchell is the cerebral type. He works hard at what he believes in, but he’s an artist, a thinker. He doesn’t even have a single hair on his body — and do you know why?’

‘He has a disease?’ Joe offered.

‘Don’t let him hear you say that. No. He rips every hair out. He’s changing the world, one follicle at a time. It’s about purity — purity of purpose, written on the body. He doesn’t like to think of himself as an animal. He sees himself as a sort of animated sculpture. He says you have to aspire to an ideal of some kind. It’s symbolic. National Socialism is big on symbols.’

‘It would take a team of people, working in relays, to defoliate my Arthur,’ Margaret said.

‘Would Mitchell call himself a National Socialist?’

‘Yes, he would.’ Peggy said this without hesitation.

‘You don’t hear that expression, “National Socialism”, very much in polite society these days, do you?’

‘Well, with your help, Joe, and with the help of your lovely friend, perhaps we can change that. As you can see, we’re not all like Ptolemy Jones. Some of us are quite nice. National Socialism isn’t the least bit frightening once you learn about it. It’s perfectly sensible.’

‘Well, that’s why I’m here, to learn.’

The subject of politics wasn’t explored much further. Joe felt that he’d learned a great deal already, and that if he pressed the women any harder he’d appear to be fishing. He went along with their complaints about the prices of goods on the black market, and pretended interest in Margaret’s detailed account of the recipe she’d followed to produce the lunch they’d soon be eating. It had the unpromising name of piquant mock ham, and was
The Women’s Weekly
’s solution to the shortage of pork. A leg of lamb, pumped and salted, boiled with a small amount of pickled pork, and coated in breadcrumbs, was expected to pass unnoticed as a Christmas ham. Margaret had high hopes for it. All Joe could think about was that the dish’s complicated preparations might well have been undertaken in the nude, and that this didn’t marry well with his notions of food hygiene. Jones had done them all a favour by discouraging this weekend of
freikörperkultur
. It was some consolation, anyway, that a lot of boiling was involved.

The air at
Candlebark Hill was heavy with the smell of peppermint gums. As the men walked among the trees, Magill drew their attention to members of the various bird species that darted about. The other men — except for Fred, who stopped at one point and ostentatiously pissed against a sapling — pretended to be interested. It was Ptolemy Jones who drew them back to the purpose of their being at Candlebark Hill. He began by saying, ‘I don’t like the name “Australian Patriots”. It’s a mouthful.’

Magill replied in a measured voice, ‘Did you have something in mind?’

‘ “Our Nation.” ’

Jones’s voice had now lost every trace of urbanity and charm. His tone brooked no opposition.

‘ “Our Nation,” ’ Magill said. ‘That’s not bad. I’ll put it before the others and get their opinion, but I think you’ll find they’ll want to stick with “Australian Patriots”.’

They’d been walking slowly, crunching through bone-dry leaf litter. Jones took a few quick steps forward, stopped, and turned to face Magill. Tom examined Jones from head to foot. His was a hard body, a stranger to self-indulgence; a body more suited to intimidation than seduction. That strange, misspelled tattoo was still raw around the edges of the letters, as if it was a recent adornment.

Jones then did something which took Tom Mackenzie completely by surprise: he raised his arm above his head in the gesture of the Nazi salute, so familiar from the newsreels. The fierce expression on his face made it clear that this was not a joke. Fred immediately returned the salute. Arthur and Magill were confused, and Tom was so disconcerted that he all he could manage was a half-hearted sort of mini-salute.

‘Perhaps we’ve misunderstood you, Mitchell,’ Jones said. ‘I had the impression you shared the vision offered by National Socialism.’

‘I am entirely sympathetic to much of the National Socialist ideology, but conditions in this country don’t mirror conditions in Germany, and no one is going to join a party at this time that aligns itself unambiguously with a country with which we are at war. It would be political suicide.’

‘I don’t believe in discreet Nazism. Herr Hitler didn’t rescue his country by hiding behind ambiguities. He did it by offering his people a choice — you’re with us or you’re against us, and if you’re against us you’d better be ready for the consequences. The Jews are learning that lesson the hard way.’

‘I see no advantage in being interned.’

‘If we profit from Hitler’s example, it will soon be us who are doing the interning.’

For the first time, Fred spoke, and forcefully.

‘You don’t negotiate with opposition. You crush it.’

Tom understood why Magill’s guests had decided to return early to Melbourne. Ptolemy and Fred must have been a shock to people who just wanted to prance around naked and play at being patriotic. Jones took a step towards Magill.

‘I believe in National Socialism. Do you? And I don’t mean all that art crap.’

‘It isn’t healthy to say that out loud,’ he replied.

‘Not even here?’

Magill looked at Tom.

‘Maybe not even here.’

‘Don’t worry about me, mate,’ Tom said. ‘I like what these two blokes have got to say, and I like the way they say it.’

‘I’ve always admired the German spirit,’ Magill said, ‘and I certainly see her as an ally. I’m happy to call myself a National Socialist when I’m among friends, but …’

‘You’re soft, Mitchell,’ Jones said. ‘Your bloody Australia First people wanted to give all sorts of rights and privileges to the boongs. What do you say about that?’

‘It wasn’t an idea I was particularly sympathetic to. There were arguments that they’re an Aryan people. Still, it wouldn’t have been a part of the Victorian branch’s philosophy. We weren’t going to be affiliated with the New South Wales branch.’

‘Victoria, New South Wales! Fuck me! You think too small. You might as well form a scout troop. There should be no doubt where members of Our Nation stand on any issue. We stand together, and we don’t talk. We act.’

Arthur cleared his throat.

‘Act?’ he asked.

‘I know,’ Jones said, ‘that there are thousands of people out there who are sick to death of this war and the way our government is kow-towing to the Poms and the Yanks. Trouble is, there’s nowhere for them to go. There’s no one who’ll listen to them, no one offering a different way of doing things. You know what I reckon? I reckon if you said to people, to individuals, that we could guarantee their prosperity, and that while we’re at it, we’ll get rid of the Jews and the blacks and the perverts, if you just told them that with no bullshit, they’d go for it. Like I say, trouble is they don’t know we’re here, and that’s what we’ve got to change.’

‘Your passion is admirable,’ Magill said with undisguised condescension. ‘However, we have to be realistic, and a party that is overtly sympathetic to the views of the generally acknowledged enemy is doomed before it begins. However strong our arguments and our convictions, we won’t be heard. We need to win people over subtly.’

‘What we need, Mitchell, is to recruit large numbers of disaffected people, and we won’t do it with meetings, or by running around with nothing on.’

Tom saw an opportunity to consolidate his position by pre-empting what he was sure Ptolemy was about to say.

‘No more fucking words,’ he said. ‘What we need to do is knock a few heads together, burn one of those synagogue rat-holes.’

Jones, who hadn’t been particularly impressed by Mackenzie over morning tea — he’d assumed he was in Magill’s circle — reassessed him. He doubted the authenticity of that occasionally working-class accent, but here he was, convincingly passionate. He’d tread cautiously, nevertheless, until Tom could be tested. Jones was very keen on testing people’s bona fides, on committing them to the party through criminal acts. For now, though, he showed his approval.

‘Good idea. That’ll be a success, and success is exactly what we want. How many people do you know who think the way you do?’

‘A good few.’

‘Everyone knows a good few, that’s the point. The few becomes the many.’

Mitchell and Arthur had remained impassive when Tom suggested arson. The idea appalled Magill, not because he disapproved of it in principle — he’d happily have every synagogue razed — but because the act would bring the authorities down on them like a ton of bricks. He didn’t believe in Ptolemy Jones’s National Socialist utopia, not in Australia. Looking from Fred to Ptolemy, at the tension in their bodies and faces, he began to think that they were actually insane. He also began to think that the Australian Patriots needed to dissociate themselves from Our Nation. If they wanted to start that party they’d have to find finance elsewhere. He knew Arthur well enough to be sure he’d be of the same mind. Now, however, wasn’t the time to show his hand.

‘It’s hot,’ he said. ‘I think we should have a swim in the dam and go in for lunch.’

‘Bloody good idea,’ Tom said. ‘I’m starting to stink in this heat.’

As they were about to move up the incline toward the dam, Magill pointed at a branch above them. A black-and-yellow bird — a crested shrike tit, Magill said — had extracted an enormous huntsman spider from beneath the bark and was efficiently removing each of its limbs before swallowing the velvety, fat bulb of its abdomen. Tom noticed the rapt look on Fred’s face; strangely, this disconcerted him more than anything that had been said. What, Tom wondered, was such a man capable of? His impulse wasn’t to run. For the first time since the war had begun, he felt he now had a job to do.

There was a
faint smell of the dam about them as the four swimmers sat down to lunch with Peggy, Margaret, and Joe. No mention was made of Tom’s idea. The conversation was about movies mostly. To everyone’s surprise, Fred revealed that he was a keen movie-goer, and spoke easily about them. The swim seemed to have loosened something in him. He wouldn’t, he said, kick Gene Tierney out of bed. The piquant mock ham wasn’t terrible, Joe decided, but he couldn’t see the point of ruining a leg of lamb by disguising it as pork. If it had been real pork he’d have eaten it happily — he didn’t adhere to any of the dietary restrictions of Judaism.